Every decade, there will be one novel you will read about the past that not only tells a fictional story but hits on true happenings that make you think about life today. Have things changed, and if not what can we do to make that change? SMALL MERCIES by Dennis Lehane is that novel for me. Well written and emotionally touching. I can feel the characters' hurt, rage, and pain through the pages as Lehane uses clear and accurate language that one feels in the middle of a situation that causes such torment. This is one of the best novels you will read this year!
Taking place in 1974 in Boston, Mary Pat is a Southie single mom of a teenage daughter. Life has not been easy for her. Now the desegregation of the public schools with riots and violence is running rampant. Mary Pat’s daughter, Jules, does not come home one night. Mary Pat tries to talk to any and everyone that might know where her daughter might be with no luck. Police pass it off as a runaway. She really didn’t want to go to high school with Black people, so hey, why not? Mary Pat knows something is wrong. She feels it. She goes to the local mob asking too many questions that no one likes. The same night a young Black man dies in the subway by what looks like he was hit by a train. Things do not add up. Could both Jules's disappearance and this young man’s death be related?
Today, some things have not changed with racism, giving SMALL MERCIES an eerie feeling. In this novel, there are two different storylines going on that happen in the same town. As I read I could feel the pain of the mother that lost her young black son. This is one place in the story where Dennis Lehane did an excellent job exhibiting the family’s pain but also their need for justice as well. Even Mary Pat’s restlessness in trying to find her daughter brought chills to me. Lehane is awesome at making you viscerally feel as you read the story. I highly recommend this novel!
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances.
The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.
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